The present invention relates to a portable telephone, and in particular to a portable telephone for performing communication by automatically switching between a plurality of communication modes such as voice and data communication modes.
For performing data communication by using a portable telephone or car telephone, an information processing terminal such as personal computer and an interface device such as modem (modulator and demodulator device) have been required in addition to the portable telephone. In this case, it is necessary to start up an application on the information processing terminal for enabling automatic reception of data by instructing from the information processing terminal.
Since the application which is started up on the information processing terminal includes various applications corresponding to communication modes such as facsimile, high speed data and packet communication mode, a presetting operation by the user is necessary.
A portable telephone which is capable of selecting communication modes between a facsimile communication mode which is performed between the portable telephone and an external facsimile device via a digital radio channel and a text data communication mode for forwarding an electronic mail between the portable telephone and an information processing device (for switching-over communication protocol and synchronization control) as well as the voice communication is disclosed in, for example, Japanese unexamined patent publication Kokai JP-A-10-98541.
As mentioned above, the following problems occur when data communication is conducted by a prior art portable telephone.
A first problem resides in that an information processing terminal and an interface device such as modem (modulating and demodulating device) are additionally necessary for performing a data communication.
A second problem resides in that in order to enable the interface device to automatically receive data from the information processing terminal, an operation to start up the application corresponding to the communication mode on the side of the information processing terminal is necessary so that the presetting operation is complicated in order to cope with a plurality of different communication modes.
Accordingly, the present invention has been made in view of above mentioned problems. It is an object of the present invention to provide a portable telephone which is capable of automatically receiving data even if the user himself does not require to conduct an operation for accepting an incoming call on reception of the incoming call of the data communication.
In one aspect of the present invention there is provided a portable telephone characterized in that said telephone comprises means for automatically identifying the communication mode on reception of an incoming call if the portable telephone is preset to an automatic receiving mode of the data communication, a plurality of communication control means, each for one of a plurality of different communication modes, means for switching for selecting any one of communication control means corresponding to the identified communication mode, and storing means for storing and saving received data.
In a further aspect of the present invention, the portable telephone may include means for informing the user that the received data is stored in said storing means if the communication mode is the data communication mode other than the voice communication mode. The portable telephone may further includes means for forwarding said stored data to an information processing terminal.